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Sunday, January 31, 2016

Australian photographer Dave Tacon documents decadent Chinese nightlife

Australian

photographer Dave 

Tacon documents 

decadent Chinese

nightlife

Tuesday 18 August 2015
Jackson McInerney
Walkley Award-winning photographer Dave Tacon moved to Shanghai because the city 'felt like the centre of the world'. He's been documenting the city's nightclub scene ever since, bearing witness to the fascinating decadence of a new class of young Chinese. He shared his photos and thoughts withBlueprint for Living.

Shanghai is the biggest city in a country undergoing enormous change. Glittering skyscrapers tower over crumbling colonial facades and hand carts are parked next to late model Lamborghinis. A new generation has been quick to embrace the consumer fetishism of the west and the nightclub is where that embrace enters a level of rapture.
In some ways, Shanghai's popular and growing club scene is a throwback to the city's past glories.
'It always had that reputation,' says photographer Dave Tacon. 'In the 1920s and '30s you had Paris, Berlin and Shanghai. I was looking to draw a connection to that time; the decadent aspect was something I was looking to document.'
At first glance, Tacon's photographs could be of nightclubs anywhere. It's all there: the bright lights, the drunken embraces, the outfits, the lingering gazes across the bar. Look a little longer, though, and you'll notice that none of the paying customers are dancing.
'Dancing is not really a priority there,' says Tacon. 'It's mostly about sitting at tables. They play a lot of drinking games with dice. It's all about conspicuous consumption.
'Sometimes people spend up to $60,000 on bar tabs. You hear stories of champagne wars, with one table trying to outspend the other. It's like a theme park of indulgence these clubs.'
The focus on consumption runs through Tacon's work. At one Shanghai club, when pricey bottles of booze are bought by patrons, a colour-coded light washes over their table to ensure no one misses who is spending big.
'Where ever you stand in the club you can see who bought bottles of Johnny Walker Blue Label because there's blue lasers beamed down from the ceiling. They have red lasers for Hennessey,' says Tacon.
'They won't just buy one. They'll buy eight or 10. There'll be five or six people at each table and if they drank everything on it, they'd be dead.'
Simply ordering a drink at the bar can have serious social consequences.  
'If you have to get a drink at the bar you're a bit of a loser,' says Tacon. 'You're right down the pecking order. If you're really someone, you'll have a reserved table and some sort of pre-arranged deal for a dozen bottles of champagne.
'There's more champagne consumed in Shanghai than anywhere else in China. It's not really a Chinese drink. It's seen as an expression of sophistication, but generally the Chinese don't like drinking things cold because it's considered to be unhealthy. The drink is tart and they prefer sweeter things.'  
But in the glittering world of the Shanghai club scene, consumption may have overtaken good taste.
Dave Tacon's photographs will be on show at The Lost Ones Gallery as part of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale from August 22.

Blueprint For Living is a weekly rummage through the essential cultural ingredients—design, architecture, food, travel, fashion—for a good life.

Chinese Cannibalism Today [Very Disturbing and Extremely Graphic]

Chinese Cannibalism Today
This is the most bizarre and has most weird eating habits in the world. Here cannibalism is not an act but a platter or is a scientific form of an exclusive range of human cuisines. In some parts of China girls are sacrificed and eaten to please God and their ancestral spirits. These girls are mostly of early teenage and before they are slaughtered their hands and legs are tied first and their mouth sealed by the plastic tape. Being helpless in front of those werewolves’ they witness their own homicide. After slitting their throats their bodies are left in the open so that the remaining blood flows out of the body naturally. The blood during the slitting of the throat is collected in the deep vessel which will be later use for performing rituals. Their bodies hare hanged upside down and then the cannibals begin the process of skinning and cleaning of the internal organs.
Fetus soup is delicacy in China and it is liked by many people over there from decades. Many says that this new kind of cannibalistic culture of eating fetus or aborted babies was started due to the rigid and harsh one child policy which force couples to abort their babies or even abandon them premature sometimes. These babies are then become the main ingredient for soup which is liked by millions of Chinese.
Here are some relevant reports and stories about this bizarre world – We posted once an article about how the Japanese simulated eating a human body as a form of edgy entertainment. Well now there are reports that the Chinese have been eating infant babies in an attempt to improve their health and beauty.
The Next Magazine, a weekly publication from Hong Kong, is reporting that infant fetuses have become a popular health and beauty supplement in China. It is further reported that in Guangdong, the demand for gourmet body parts is so high, that they can even be purchased directly from the hospitals.
It is reported that during a banquet hosted by a Taiwanese businessman, a servant Ms Liu from Liaoning province on the mainland inadvertently revealed the habit of eating infants/fetuses in Liaoning province and her intention to return for the supplement due to health concerns. The Taiwanese women present were horrified.
Ms Liu also disclosed that even though people can afford the human parts there are still waiting lists and those with the right connections get the “highest quality” human parts, which translates to the more mature fetuses. A male fetus is considered the “prime” human part.
Ms Liu then escorted the reporter to a location where a fetus was being prepared. A woman was chopping up a male fetus and making soup from the placenta. During the process, the woman even tried to comfort everyone by saying, “Don’t be afraid, this is just the flesh of a higher animal.”
In fact, in China, reports about meals made from infant flesh have surfaced from time to time. A video is on the Internet for people to view. In the introduction, the Chinese claim that eating a human fetus is an art form.
On March 22, 2003, police in Bingyan, Guangxi Province seized 28 female babies smuggled in a truck from Yulin, Guangxi Province going to Houzhou in Anhui Province. The oldest baby was only three months old. The babies were packed three or four to a bag and many of them were near death.
On the morning of October 9, 2004, a person rifling through the garbage on the outskirts of Jiuquan city in the Suzhou region, found dismembered babies in a dumpster. There were two heads, two torsos, four arms, and six legs. According to the investigation, these corpses were no more than a week old and they had been dismembered after cooking.
Although China has laws that prohibit the eating of human fetus, the regime’s forced abortions to ensure the one child policy is strictly adhered to thereby creating many opportunities for these sorts of atrocities to occur.
Thailand
A favorite tourist destination and a glittering hub of sex trade have seen its people being cannibal sometime to satisfy their bizarre of this taboo. In 2009 there was a case when Thai people of Sawang Pae Paisarn Foundation in the distant corner of this country killed a Nigerian and was eaten by them after cooking all his dissected body parts and was distributed among all those who have participated in this act of insane anthropophagi. However the truth is something else their pictures of removing flesh from body were a religious act which was performed by the members of this foundation and with the help of volunteers were intercepted with pictures of cooking lunch by some members at the same location. This ceremony in Thailand is called Lang Pa Cha which is performed when the cemetery gets filled up having no more space to accommodate dead bodies further. This ceremony is mostly held during the summer season from March – May. So, in order to ease out the cremation process in the already squeezed and of small sized cremation chamber they clear the entire flesh from the skeleton and dissect it followed by rituals. The remaining flesh also goes into cremation chamber but after cremating the cleaned skeletal. This is a Buddhist practice and is carried in almost all the Buddhist faith countries like China and other South Pacific countries and even Sri-Lanka.

In 2011, Indonesian police arrested a 29-year-old cannibalistic woman who admitted to killing and eating up to 30 girls and then her husband. She kept the human meat in her refrigerator to eat when she pleased. The woman also confessed to cooking human meat for her friends and relatives at dinner parties held at her house. She blamed her inner desires for killing and eating the people and said she would do it again if she had the chance...:

Why Is China Having Measles Outbreaks When 99% Are Vaccinated?

Why Is China Having Measles

 

Outbreaks When 99% Are 


Vaccinated?


China has one of the most vaccination compliant populations in the world. In fact, measles vaccine is mandatory. So why have they had over 700 measles outbreaks from 2009 and 2012 alone? The obvious answer is the the measles vaccines are simply NOT effective. 

A recent study published in PLoS titled, “Difficulties in eliminating measles and controlling rubella and mumps: a cross-sectional study of a first measles and rubella vaccination and a second measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination,” has brought to light the glaring ineffectiveness of two measles vaccines (measles–rubella (MR) ormeasles–mumps–rubella (MMR) ) in fulfilling their widely claimed promise of preventing outbreaks in highly vaccine compliant populations.
According to the study,


 “The reported coverage of the measles-rubella (MR) or measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine isgreater than 99.0% in Zhejiang province. However, the incidence of measles, mumps, and rubella remains high.” [emphasis added]
China’s Great Mandatory Vaccine Experiment FAILURE
Zhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People’s Republic of China and home to 55 million inhabitants. All children there receive a compulsory first dose of MR at 8 months and another dose of the MMR vaccine at 18–24 months.
In the new study researchers analyzed a subset of 1,015 Zehjiang inhabitants and found that despite the recent measles outbreaks 93.6% of them were seropositive for measles antibodies, meaning they had presumably vaccine-induced protective antibodies against measles in their blood serum — more than is required to obtain so-called ‘herd immunity’ threshold of 88%–92%, which is often claimed to be the solution to extinguishing infectious diseases altogether. And yet despite this theoretical ‘protection,’ eight-seven (8.6%) of the subjects developed measles anyway.
Another recent study, published in the highly authorative Bulletin of the World Health Organization, looked at recent measles occurrences throughout China and found that there were 707 measles outbreaks in the country recorded between 2009 and 2012, with a steep trend upwards in 2013: “The number of measles cases reported in the first 10 months of 2013 – 26 443 – was three times the number reported in the whole of 2012.” This is all the more odd considering that since 2009 “…the first dose of measles-virus-containing vaccine has reached more than 90% of the target population.” One would expect with increasing measles vaccine uptake there would result in a decrease in measles incidence.
safe_image
Clearly the vaccines aren’t as effective as claimed, nor is the concept of herd immunity — which is debunked and decimated here and here — supported unequivocally by the epidemiological evidence.


The failure of vaccine-induced antibody titers to protect against ‘vaccine preventable disease’ may make more sense when you consider the antibody-based theory of vaccine efficacy – a fundamental tenet of vaccinology/immunology – was recently called into question: Study Calls Into Question Primary Justification for Vaccines.  Injecting aluminum and other highly immunotoxic adjuvants into the body in order to stimulate elevated antibody titers does not in and of itself guarantee their affinity for the antigen they are supposed to be protecting you against. To the contrary, It is much like saying you have improved the overall health of the beehive by kicking it with your boot to stir its angry residents and getting them to sting (and hence die) the closest thing around them.  We highly suggest you obtain a copy of Tetyana Obukhanych’s layperson oriented book Vaccine Illusion (she is  a Ph.D. in immunology from Rockefeller University, New York, NY) to learn the almost universally repressed truth about the dangers and ineffectiveness of vaccines.
The  WHO’s Goal of Eradicating Measles in China with Mandatory Vaccines Has Failed
In 2005, the Regional Committee of WHO Western Pacific Region established 2012 as the target date for the complete regional elimination of measles, and the Chinese Ministry of Health initiated mandatory measles vaccination to accomplish this. A year later, in 2006, China set a goal of accelerating the progress of eliminating measles by 2012, striving to keep measles incidence below 0.1 per 100,000, and then developed a series of vaccination strategies to execute these goals.
And yet, despite the full and near universal implementation of multi-dose vaccines, measles, mumps and rubella outbreaks continued to afflict those receiving them:
“Measles outbreaks continued in 2008, with 12782 cases reported, which translated to 252.61 per million of the population. From 2009 to 2011, the incidence of measles remained high at 3.14–17.2 per million of the population. Similarly, the incidence of mumps increased from 394.32 to 558.26 per million of the population in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Finally, the reported cases of rubella increased from 3284 to 4284 in 2007 and 2011, respectively, representing a 30.45% increase or an increase from 65.94 to 78.71 per million of the population. Therefore, the elimination of measles and control of mumps and rubella are urgent public health priorities in local regions.”
As we have explored in a previous article, “Measles: A Rash of Misinformation,” the measles vaccine is not nearly as safe and effective as is widely believed. Measles outbreaks have consistently occurred in highly immunization complaint populations. For a more extensive review of the epidemiological literature on measles outbreaks happening within highly vaccine complaint populations read: The 2013 Measles Outbreak: A Failing Vaccine, Not A Failure To Vaccinate
Sadly, the latest study concludes with the recommendation that the MMR vaccine should be increased to two doses with the first dose at 8 months and the second dose at 18–24 months. They further suggest, that in addition to another MMR vaccine, “An MR vaccination speed-up campaign may be necessary for elder adolescents and young adults, particularly young females.” As has been the historical response pattern of the medical establishment’s pro-vaccine agenda when facing the evidence of their failed vaccine campaigns, instead of acknowledging the folly of relying exclusively on a vaccine-centric view of immunity (what about nutrition, vitamin D, improved sanitation and hygiene?) they default counter-intuitively to increasing the number of vaccines given, adding 1 or 2 ‘boosters’ when the vaccines clearly are not working. [Take a look at other failed vaccine campaigns here, often followed by the same dead-end recommendations.] This intellectually dishonest and callous approach, in fact, is a primary driver for the expansion of already dangerously high number of vaccines that are presently populating the CDC’s arguably insane immunization schedule — a schedule with the highest number of vaccines in the world, and which we are supposed to believe has nothing to do with the exponentially increasing autism rate (1 in 5,000 in 1975; 1 in 65 today) in our country, or its shameful if not outrageous 33th-worst infant mortality rate in the developed world.
china-284x190
Another highly concerning problem with the new study is its conspiculous lack of mention of the known unintended, adverse effects of vaccination. In fact, earlier this year we reported on another Chinese vaccine study that found that “42% of Drug Reactions Are Vaccine Related, groundbreaking Chinese Study Finds.”
And of course, we cannot leave out mention of what is likely the greatest medical cover-up of our time: the senior vaccine scientist William Thompson at the CDC blows the whistle on how his agency covered up the autism/vaccine link for over a decade (and likely much more malfeasance still to be uncovered), and which is still ongoing, as no mainstream media group has yet to cover the facts of the story in a serious or honest manner.  How many of these Chinese infants and children will undergo neurodevelopmental regression or suffer other neurological insults as a result of using the same MMR vaccine the CDC identified as doing harm to African-American boys? We may never know, but we can be certain that they are not immune to the well-documented dangers.
Given the gravity of potential harms associated with routine vaccines, juxtaposed to the perhaps far lesser risk associated with contracting what were once considered normal, immune system building natural infections (measles), the issue here is really about balancing the pro’s versus the con’s, with the medical literature itself guiding parents decisions, who have the legal right and responsibility to choose what medical interventions their children should succumb to.
Source:
[1] Zhifang Wang, Rui Yan, Hanqing He, Qian Li, Guohua Chen, Shengxu Yang, Enfu Chen. Difficulties in eliminating measles and controlling rubella and mumps: a cross-sectional study of a first measles and rubella vaccination and a second measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination. PLoS One. 2014 ;9(2):e89361. Epub 2014 Feb 20. PMID:24586717
[2] Vaccination and herd immunity to infectious diseases. Anderson RM, May RM Nature. 1985 Nov 28-Dec 4; 318(6044):323-9. [PubMed]

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Canada prepares for an Asian future

Canada prepares for an Asian future

  • 25 May 2012
  •  
  • From the section
View of Vancouver
Image captionNearly one in five of Vancouver's population is Chinese
Chinese immigrants have flocked to Canada's west coast and transformed Vancouver into Canada's very own Asian metropolis. The days of concern over the city being turned into 'Hongcouver' have gone. What does the future hold for Canada's Asian population?
Shoppers stroll casually past a Lamborghini store in Richmond's Aberdeen Centre - a major Asian mall in this once sleepy Vancouver suburb known for its farmland and fishing village.
Outside the shopping centre, people are queuing at the many Chinese restaurants. In the local supermarkets, butchers are picking live seafood out of fish tanks, chopping off the heads, then gutting and packaging them up under the watchful eye of customers, almost exclusively Chinese-Canadian.
Richmond is North America's most Asian city - 50% of residents here identify themselves as Chinese. But it's not just here that the Chinese community in British Columbia (BC) - some 407,000 strong - has left its mark. All across Vancouver, Chinese-Canadians have helped shape the local landscape.

Increasing trade

There are the little things. Casa Gelato - an Italian ice-cream shop with a huge local following - sells Asian-inspired flavours such as green tea, durian and lychee. The Vancouver Sun newspaper puts out an online Mandarin edition, Taiyangbao. The province's auto insurance corporation serves drivers in 170 languages - Mandarin and Cantonese being the most in-demand.
Then there are the big contributions.
"Economic growth is obvious and easy to measure," says Thomas Tam, the CEO of Success, an immigrant service based in Vancouver's historic Chinatown.
For the first time in 2011, the Pacific Rim dislodged the US as British Columbia's biggest trade partner . With the collapse of the US housing market, lumber exports have fallen. But demand for coal and natural gas to fuel China's factories is skyrocketing.
Exports to China reached CAN$5.1bn ($5bn/£3.17bn) in 2011, nearly five times their value in 2001. Other booming industries include agrifoods, minerals, container traffic, tourism and education. The economic boost has driven a CAN$22bn ($21.6bn/£13.7bn) upgrade in infrastructure along trade corridors with Asia.
"Within the last 20 years, we have expanded our airport twice, had a big facelift for our port, and seen the biggest-ever highway construction," he says. "Because of the impact of immigration, Canada as a whole is more resilient to economic recession and that's undeniable."
For centuries, Chinese immigrants have come to Canada for economic opportunities. It began with the gold rush in northern and central BC in 1858. In the 1880s, some 6,500 Chinese migrants were directly employed by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), settling in towns along the railway route, all the way to the terminus in Vancouver, where the fledgling Chinatown took root (now the third-largest in North America).
But resentment grew among the white working classes, who saw the migrants as cheap labour, the so-called "yellow peril" stealing jobs and sullying society. In 1885, the federal government enacted the first anti-Chinese legislation, imposing a ' head tax ' of CAN$50 on every migrant worker.
Under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923, immigration ground to a halt. The ban was lifted in 1947 - due in part to the contribution of Chinese-Canadian soldiers in WWII - but Mao's red revolution closed the door at the other end.

Sharp backlash

The next significant wave of migrants came in the 1980s and 90s. But they weren't about to do manual labour or settle in Chinatown with the so-called Chi-eppies (Chinese elderly people) and Chi-lippies (Chinese low-income people).
This was a largely wealthy class of Hong Kong Chinese who snapped up homes in the priciest neighbourhoods, sent their children to the best schools, and kicked off a construction boom which transformed downtown Vancouver into a Hong Kong-style city of skyscrapers.
John D Belshaw, author
Image captionAuthor John Belshawe says the newcomers' wealth irritated some Vancouver residents
Their sudden impact brought a sharp backlash. Polite Vancouver society was aghast at the "monster houses" being built in the old-monied communities of Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale, often demolishing character homes and tearing down trees in the process.
Newspaper headlines and some politicians warned of an "Asian invasion" while the bitter elite coined the phrase 'Hongcouver' to express their dismay at the perceived Asian-isation of their city.
"The wealth of the newcomers was an irritation to some in the local community," says historian John Douglas Belshaw, a professor at the University of Victoria. But attitudes soon began to change, he says.
"The elite says, 'Our bread's buttered on this side. We can sell a ton of real estate to this community and they're kind of like us. These people like their whiskey straight'."

Mandarin increase

The Hong Kong wave subsided after the British handover to China in 1997. Since then, immigrants from Mainland China, and to a lesser extent, Taiwan are leading the westward charge.
Mandarin is edging out Cantonese on the streets of the city. Overall, nearly one-in-five Vancouverites is now of Chinese origin - the biggest migrant community by far, with some 12,400 new arrivals each year.
Privately, there have been grumblings. In the safety of living rooms or the anonymity of online forums, old-time Vancouverites blame the Chinese for the city's sky-high property prices, although experts say there's little evidence to back up the fears.
Language is another flashpoint, especially when it comes to older migrants. "There used to be a time when immigrants to this country were required to know the language," whispers a woman in a doctor's clinic, as the receptionist struggles to ask an elderly Chinese man when he last took his heart medication. A family member has to be contacted by phone before the queue gets moving again.
Thomas Lam (Pic: Ayesha Bhatty)
Image captionThomas Tam says people need to treat the society as an opportunitychanging 
There's concern too that foreign students are taking up places at university, bringing much-needed bags of cash in foreign student fees. A similar problem is playing out in schools, some say.
"My son wants out of private school," says one parent who asked not to be named. His teenager has become one of the few white students at an exclusive Christian academy in a Vancouver suburb. "All these Asian kids are playing the piano and violin in the evenings. My kid plays hockey," he says.
It's not uncommon to find only one or two white students in Vancouver classrooms, says Mr Tam in his Chinatown office, especially in courses like finance or engineering.
He says he gives the same advice to all young people - Asian and non-Asian - struggling to find their place: "Take this as an opportunity rather than a challenge.
"The future is in Asia and Vancouver has a very good advantage, which is that of all the Canadian cities, we are the closest to the Asia Pacific Rim."
That reality is reflected in the BC government's economic plan, aptly titled " Canada starts here " - a clear reference to BC as the Pacific gateway, a full three sailing days closer than anywhere else in North America.
"Our government is focused on making sure British Columbians are first in line to do business with Asia to create jobs here at home," says Premier Christy Clark.
"Vancouver and British Columbia are a natural place for many Asian families because of our diversity. There are countless personal and cultural connections here and our economy and province is richer, more vibrant and attractive for newcomers as a result," her office said in a statement.
For now, BC continues to prosper from its ties to Asia and its booming economy.